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Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.An indictment unsealed in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary.At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq.The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a...

The system allowed individuals and companies to use Iraq's UN-controlled oil-for-food programme to purchase Iraqi oil at concessionary prices and resell it, splitting their huge profits with Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader. Under the programme, the Iraqi regime had to sell its oil under international supervision but could choose its own middlemen. Those intermediaries, invariably sympathetic to Saddam and his money, paid for the oil into a United Nations account at prices agreed by Baghdad. That money was in turn used by the UN to buy food, medical supplies and other essential goods for Iraq. The purpose of the system...

FBI agents yesterday raided the suburban Detroit headquarters of LIFE for Relief and Development (LRD), the largest Islamic charity in the country. I first wrote about the group for The Post in 2003. Back then, FBI Director Robert Mueller was set to give an award to Imad Hamad, who heads the Midwest chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). But, after my Post article pointed out that Hamad was a subject in over a dozen terrorism-related investigations, the FBI revoked the award. One of those investigations concerned Hamad's close ties to LRD. Both the FBI and the then-U.S. Customs...

September 18, 2006 BREAKING: Largest U.S. Islamic Charity Raided by FBI Printer Friendly By Debbie Schlussel I've been writing about LIFE for Relief and Development for years, and I think my columns (especially this one), have finally made a difference. Ditto for my complaints about LIFE to Assistant U.S. Attorney for counterterrorism, Ken Chadwell. Less than half an hour ago, the FBI began raiding LIFE and hauling out documents. Well, it's about time. LIFE--the largest Islamic charity still open for business in America--openly admitted on its 1995-'97 taxes to be a major funder of HAMAS. Headquartered in the Orthodox Jewish...

SCATTERED AMONG the loose papers and bound files unearthed last week at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad was "letter no. 140/4/5," labeled "Confidential and Personal" and addressed to "The President's Office--Secretariat." The letter concerns George Galloway, a pro-Saddam member of the British Parliament, who founded a charity known as the Mariam Appeal, ostensibly to aid Iraqi children suffering under U.N. sanctions. The missive, from the Iraqi Intelligence Service, is a request that money be funneled directly to Galloway. It reads in part: His projects and future plans for the benefit of [Iraq] need financial support to become a motive...

Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party that ruled Cambodia from 1976-1979. "Khmer Rouge" (or Khmer Reds) was the French rendering of the organization’s official name: the "Communist Party of Cambodia," later the "Party of Democratic Kampuchea" and also the "Communist Party of Kampuchea," or CPK. (Kampuchea is the local name for Cambodia.) Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar in what is now the province of Kompong Thong, Cambodia in 1925. He came from a prosperous farming family that in 1931 moved to the capital, Phnom Penh, where the young Pol Pot learned some of...

Karl Rove is under fire from Democrats who have demanded he apologize or resign for the his comments at a New York State Conservative Party dinner on Wednesday. Here is some of what Rove said: LET me now say a few words about the state of liberalism. Perhaps the place to begin is with this stinging indictment: "Liberalism is at greater risk now than at any time in recent American history. The risk is of political marginality, even irrelevance . . . [L]iberalism risks getting defined, as conservatism once was, entirely in negative terms." These are not the words of...

In September of 2002, Jim McDermott (D-WA), David Bonior (D-MI) and Mike Thompson (D-CA) traveled to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein. Before they left for Baghdad, Jim McDermott made the following public statement: "the President of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war." After McDermott returned, he continued to make similar statements. While the 3 Democrats were in Baghdad, did they make representations to Saddam Hussein that their fellow Democrats and the Democrats' friends in the mainstream liberal media were willing to commit seditious acts to buttress Hussein's increasingly...

...Iraq's top customer was Russia, whose firms bought $19.2 billion worth of Iraq oil and exported $3.3 billion in humanitarian goods. Fellow Security Council member France was a distant but significant second, at $4.4 billion and $2.9 billion respectively. China is also high on the list. Oil voucher recipients are alleged to include the Russian presidential office, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, and even former Oil for Food program director Benon Sevan of the U.N.... Against this backdrop, it is impossible to take Secretary-General Annan seriously when he calls it "inconceivable" that this could have affected the Security Council's...

Bush works to woo conservative Democrats, independents in Saginaw By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN The Associated Press 8/5/2004, 9:45 p.m. ET SAGINAW, Mich. (AP) — President Bush brought his message on the economy, education and health care on his latest visit to Michigan, but saved the bulk of his time for talking about keeping the country safe and protecting institutions such as marriage. "If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch," Bush said Thursday evening, bringing a cheering crowd of more than 6,000 to their feet at...

Terrorist PACBy J. Michael WallerInsight Magazine | November 21, 2003 On September 11, 2001, as people around the world opened their hearts and their checkbooks to victims of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, a prominent Muslim activist laid out $3,000 of his own. But he didn't have the victims in mind. He used the occasion to help re-elect one of his favorite federal lawmakers: a feisty left-winger who kept the FBI in her political crosshairs. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, Abdurahman Alamoudi wrote two checks that day totaling $3,000 to the campaign committee of...

Insight on the News - National Issue: 03/02/04 Special Report Saffuri's Ties to Terror Suspects By Kenneth R. Timmerman The rise of Khaled Saffuri to political prominence within the U.S. Muslim community has all the ingredients of a Horatio Alger success story. Brought up as a stateless exile in Kuwait, Saffuri came to America as a student in 1982, went to college in San Diego, and soon gravitated into the world of Muslim activism. A talented fund-raiser and behind-the-scenes power broker, Saffuri built bridges to politicians in both parties by generously contributing to their election campaigns, from California libertarian Rep....

From a tangle of recent accusations about Iraqi oil profiteering and international deceit that stretches from Washington's Beltway to Baghdad, one name keeps popping up: Shakir Al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-born metro Detroiter [snip] The West Bloomfield father and Southfield business owner has become entangled in a simmering scandal that now threatens to overtake the United Nations' biggest humanitarian mission, the oil-for-food program. Hearings were held this week in Congress following a congressional report earlier this month that said that much of the money generated by the program was skimmed off before it reached the Iraqi people. [snip] The GAO estimated that...

Special ReportSaffuri's Ties to Terror Suspects Posted Feb. 23, 2004 By Kenneth R. Timmerman Saffuri (above) has formed relationships with several questionable allies, including Sami al-Arian, who was arrested last year. The rise of Khaled Saffuri to political prominence within the U.S. Muslim community has all the ingredients of a Horatio Alger success story. Brought up as a stateless exile in Kuwait, Saffuri came to America as a student in 1982, went to college in San Diego, and soon gravitated into the world of Muslim activism. A talented fund-raiser and behind-the-scenes power broker, Saffuri built bridges to politicians in both...

Omega Letter Christian Intelligence Digest Who Did Saddam Bribe? List Names Top Officials in France, Russia Terror - Islam Monday, February 09, 2004 MEMRI On January 25, 2004, a daily newspaper in Iraq called al Mada published a list of individuals and organizations who it says received oil from the now-deposed regime. Among those listed is Shakir al Khafaji, an Iraqi-American from Detroit, who ran "Expatriate Conferences" for the regime in Baghdad. Al Khafaji also contributed $400,000 to the production of Scott Ritter's film "In Shifting Sands." Finally, al Khafaji arranged travel and financing for the "Baghdad Democrats"--Jim McDermott, Mike...

The following report from MEMRI's Baghdad office is a translation of an article which appeared in the Iraqi daily Al-Mada,(1) which obtained lists of 270 companies, organizations, and individuals awarded allocations (vouchers) of crude oil by Saddam Hussein's regime. The beneficiaries reside in 50 countries: 16 Arab, 17 European, 9 Asian, and the rest from sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Only a portion of the 270 recipients are listed and identified.

Bonior to head up Gephardt campaign in state, nationally By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN The Associated Press 12/18/2003, 5:14 p.m. ET LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. David Bonior of Mount Clemens said Thursday he will head up Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt's Michigan campaign and serve as co-chairman of the Missouri congressman's national campaign. The two worked closely together in the U.S. House before Bonior chose to run for governor in 2002 rather than for another House term. Bonior was the House minority whip and Gephardt was the House minority leader during Bonior's last years in office. Gephardt campaigned...

You may remember the Chicago-based Islamic website Soundvision.com which hosted messages celebrating and applauding the suicide bombing in Israel last week, such as these highlighted by Daniel Pipes: ************************************************************************** SoundVision.com Visitors Applaud Jerusalem Suicide Bombing. The murder of 18 bus-riding Israelis by a militant Islamic terrorist on August 19 met with the expected joy in the Palestinian and Lebanese street ("Several hundred young men poured into the streets of a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon on Tuesday and handed out sweets to celebrate a suicide bomb attack on a Jerusalem bus," reads one account). More noteworthy is the public, English-language...

IN LAST WEEK'S EPISODE, much of respectable Washington was aghast that the Bush White House had "politicized" the possibility of war by questioning the patriotism of congressional Democrats who opposed the president's Iraq policy. Respectable Washington was mistaken about all this. First off, war is an intrinsically and legitimately political issue, partisan debate about which is nothing to be aghast over. And while it would indeed have been beyond the pale for the president and his men to smear Democratic dissent as per se disloyal, no such smear had actually been forthcoming. Neither, for that matter, had any serious Democratic...

Congressman Jim McDermott: Saddam Hussein's Useful Idiot in the U.S. Congress by Larry Elder (October 10, 2002) Article website address: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1966 Summary: A member of U.S. Congress on enemy soil, declaring greater trust and faith in the enemy than in his own president! [CAPITALISM MAGAZINE.COM] Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, post-Sept. 11, held up a New York Post headline, "Bush Knew." "Bush knew," said Sen. Clinton. "The president knew what?" Then Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., on a radio talk show, insisted that Bush not only knew, but intentionally avoided taking action so as to enrich his friends in the military business....